


13:  Just Making Sure You're Still There

by light_source



Series: High Heat [13]
Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:19:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_source/pseuds/light_source
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim’s knees come straight up to his chest, and he watches the hair on his arms slowly stand on end. Every part of him waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	13:  Just Making Sure You're Still There

That song Wilson’s singing - he can’t remember where he’s heard it. But as Tim flips on the lights and unbuttons his shirt, the words rise one by one into the back of his throat: _Open the doors and board ‘em / There's room for all among the unh unh unh._

Tim’s speaking voice is low, bass/baritone, but he got an R&B falsetto going when he was a kid, singing along with Lionel Richie and Phil Collins and Otis on the AM radio when his mom drove him to practices.

Sometimes they’d both sing, his mom teaching him the old words and making up new words to her favorite songs. Sometimes the made-up words were about him. A song from when he was in kindergarten pops into his mind and then right out of his mouth: _He drives me crazy / And I can’t help myself._ He drums his fingers on the sink ledge to bring the bass line that goes with it.

As he’s brushing his teeth, he remembers how she’d talk to him in the rearview mirror, and her eyes would disappear into her cheeks when she laughed. Like his own, he thinks, seeing his reflection in the mirror.

Every once in a while she’d reach one hand over the seat back and touch him.

\- No reason, she’d say. - Just making sure you’re still there.

//

**Milwaukee  
June 19, 2007**

When they’re playing the Brewers, the Giants stay at the Pfister, a gloomy Victorian pile across the street from baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s office. All the teams stay there, and pretty much everybody complains about it being haunted. A couple weeks ago, the Mets’ rookie centerfielder Carlos Gomez got spooked by something and ran downstairs in his underwear and spent the night in the lobby. It’s old, creepy, the kind of place that has too much over-the-top wallpaper, and Tim’s always a little on edge till they leave.

Tonight Tim’s too whacked to care.

No matter where he put his pitches in the first two innings today, the Brewers either cakewalked around the bases or they lit him up mercilessly. By the second, Sanchez was already greasing up in the bullpen. Bochy kept sending guys out to the mound to slow him down.

Tim felt like he couldn’t breathe till the ball was out of his hand.

In the dugout in the top of the third, Steve Kline cornered Tim by the bat bin, fencing him in with his thick, hairy arms, leering.

\- Look, kid, I wantcha to stop thinkin’ about where you’re throwin’ the fuckin’ pitch. Just take a deep breath and throw what Memo tells ya.

\- And then, for fuck’s sake, _now listen a me_ , slow down and make ‘em wait for the next one. They’re like girls, they go down easier if you make ‘em wait. You prolly know somethin’ about that.

Kline punctuated this speech with a _phhhhttt_ of brown tobacco spit that splashed up on Tim’s cleats and around his ankles.

\- And if you lose this game for us, rook, Kline growled, - _I’m sending that fuckin’ ghost to your room tonight._

In his final two innings Tim retired six of seven batters, striking out two of them.

Tim still got the loss, though, and Bochy spent the postgame interview explaining to the press why they’re not gonna send him down to Fresno - yet.

//

The Pfister’s ghosts have their party tricks. Charles Pfister’s ghost supposedly stands on the steps of the grand staircase surveying the lobby, and a see-through bride haunts the hallways of the fourteenth (really the thirteenth) floor. Ipods mysteriously start playing, curtains rise and fall at their own sweet will, cellphones ring with calls that are silent and vanish from memory, and in the middle of the night, people hear not-there people screaming and chains clanking.

Tim scoffs at this kind of stuff. But even Kline’s admitted he sleeps with a baseball bat when they stay at the Pfister, and Russ Ortiz drapes his rosary over the corner of his headboard.

Tonight, exhausted after his start, Tim slides easily into sleep.

And then in the darkness he hauls himself awake, convinced that someone’s touched his shoulder. He slaps the light on. The only movement in the room is the hem of the curtains gently blowing up from the air vent.

It’s quiet - just the gravelly hum of the air conditioner - but then he hears it: a syrupy sound, like a drain that’s slowly clearing, or the suck of a straw at the bottom of a drink. It’s neither loud nor soft, and it seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. And then it stops.

Tim’s knees come straight up to his chest, and he watches the hair on his arms slowly stand on end. Every part of him waits.

The light on the room phone startles him, blinking red and insistent. He grabs the handset, nearly knocking the whole thing off the nightstand.

\- Yeah? he says, holding his breath. Silence. And then.

\- You’re awake, says a voice. It’s Zito’s.

Tim huffs out the breath he’s been holding. He’s never been happier to hear one of his teammates’ voices.

\- There’s something here, says Tim. - Woke me up. I can’t figure it out. Shit, man, I thought this was all bullshit, these guys.

And that’s how Tim winds up two floors up in Zito’s corner suite- _does he pay extra for this stuff?_ \- where the curtains are still open to the glittering city because Zito hasn’t gone to bed yet. He starts the last game of the series against the Brewers tomorrow.

Zito picks up a fresh glass from the bar and raises his eyebrows at Tim.

Tim nods, and when Barry hands him the glass he drains it and wipes his mouth with his fingers. The whiskey warms his insides going down, but he’s still cold, the sweat’s cooling on him, and he pulls the cuffs of his sweatshirt down over his hands.

He pats the front pocket of his jeans: he’d had the presence of mind to put on some clothes, but he’s left his key behind. Zito, watching him, smiles.

\- What’d you forget?

\- Key, says Tim.

\- You don’t have to go back there tonight, says Zito.  Immediately he looks embarrassed.  - That didn’t come out right. There’s a short pause, and he looks away.

\- What I mean is there’s an extra bed here, you’re welcome to it, he continues, regaining his composure.

\- I can get another key from the front desk, says Tim. - But thanks.

He catches Zito’s eye. - Why were you calling me?

\- I don’t know, says Barry. - Maybe I’m psychic. He smiles. - This place has a weird effect on people.

When he takes Tim’s empty glass, their hands touch.

\- Jesus. You’re freezing, says Zito.

\- Yeah, well, that’ll happen when you’re scared shitless, says Tim.

\- Last time you were that cold, we were at your place, says Barry.

Tim decides to keep his mouth shut.

Zito, who’s been looking down at the two glasses in his hand, drops his chin and looks up at Tim from under his eyebrows. He couldn’t be closer, Tim thinks, without their actually touching. As Barry leans in and tips his head to the side, so close Tim can feel the warmth of his breath, smell his clean skin, Tim turns his face away - _No._

Zito pulls back, with that expression on his face Tim’s seen before, formal, composed. Zito straightens up and then he squares his shoulders. This small gesture somehow stops Tim’s breath. Zito turns and walks over to the wet bar, where he sets down the glasses, his back to Tim and the room.

Something Tim doesn’t quite understand propels him forward. With a few light steps he closes the distance between them and circles his arms around Zito, pressing himself up against the left-hander’s back, his cheek resting against the nape of Barry’s neck. In that moment, somehow both awkward and right, Tim can feel the rush of air in Zito’s lungs, and then, surprising, the slam and rattle of his pounding heart. Zito covers Tim’s hands with his own, stroking softly, and he murmurs something, a sound that registers like a faraway rumble of thunder against Tim’s ear.

Without loosening Tim’s arms, Barry turns so they’re face to face, their eyes wide open, almost surprised; considering.

When Barry leans in to kiss him, Tim meets him more than halfway.

//

The lights in Zito’s suite are off, but the glittering city lights through the big corner windows bathe the room in grey and white, almost like moonlight. This time, unhurried by cold, they kiss each other slowly, deeply, eye to eye, their bodies finding each other’s outlines, as if they have all the time in the world. Because in point of fact they do.

In some far-off workaday part of his brain, Tim’s amazed - he’s religious about going to bed early before a start - but the expression in Zito’s eyes tells him the left-hander’s not thinking about baseball, and who is he to object?

Especially when he finds himself in those hands his body hasn’t been able to forget.

Those hands, soft but uncompromising, that are mapping his skin as though he’s a new world and Zito has to record every contour. So he can find his way back? So that they both can remember how they got here?

Tim can’t figure. He can only writhe in pleasure as he watches Zito’s dark hair bend over his belly, then lower, and Tim gasps from wanting it. Zito takes his hard-on in his mouth, hot, wet, and slick, his hand working the shaft, his other hand stroking the inside of Tim’s thighs, and his tongue somehow everywhere at once until Tim’s so close he feels like he’s about to scream.

And at that moment Zito stretches up till he’s level with Tim, his hand still on Tim’s cock, and kisses him slowly and slyly, narrow-eyed, and Tim can feel his breath, warm and hot, on the side of his neck.

\- Oh, my god, Tim, he says, - I wanna fuck you. Would you -

\- My first time, says Tim. - Go slow.

The trance they’re in feels as effortless as hair lifted by the wind, and Tim absorbs Zito’s unhurried rhythm with the kind of wonderment he hasn’t felt since he was a kid.

He uses his mouth to get Zito hard and together they put on the condom, and Zito uses his hands, one on Tim’s cock and the other to open and relax him, one finger at a time, until Tim feels like he’s gonna come just from the finger-fucking and Zito’s tongue down his throat.

When Zito finally enters him with a gasp Tim feels a shock, almost of recognition, like he’s finally figured something out he’s been watching for years from the edge of the crowd. Zito’s filling him beyond what he could imagine, and he’s stroking Tim’s cock with the same rhythm he’s using to fuck him, and when they both come, Tim's calling out his name.


End file.
